State of Emergency
by ChaosWolf021
Summary: There was once an empire known as humanity. In the streets of New York, this empire no longer exists. It is a memory, just as hope and life before it.


**_Author's Note:_** This is a quick one shot spawned from a conversation I had with a buddy of mine where he said zombies wouldn't really be able to take over the world because of the technology and weaponry we have. Anyway, this is my response and a short piece to help broaden the 'Shattered' story. Hope you all enjoy.

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**State of Emergency**

_A Shattered Tale

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_

Pvt. Frank Riley walked down what had once been one of the busiest streets of New York City, but now… now it was just another death trap. The street was full of broken cars, corpses, and screaming people. Police officers fought for their lives against hordes of what Riley could only identify as the enemy, while military personnel gunned down as many of the enemy as they could. Just behind him, cars and corpses alike were ground beneath the heavy treads of an M1 Abrams tank, the gunner atop the turret lazily looking around at the carnage.

Insane, bleeding, men and women. Former citizens of the city turned cannibalistic, and homicidal. Once upstanding people of society, now all they cared for was death, and the next meal they could receive from someone who wasn't like them.

Riley lifted his M-16 rifle, the butt in his shoulder. Three shots, two to the chest, one to the head. A scarlet and grayish mist of gore filled the air behind the young man as he collapsed to the street, as dead as the person whose blood stained his lips. Riley continually looked around, never letting his guard down. The… crazies, they were everywhere.

The young private thought back to the briefing. He remembered officers and scientists telling him and everyone else in the briefing room that the enemy was already dead. Reanimated corpses with a hunger for human flesh.

Riley shook his head at the very thought. He had silently scoffed at the idea in the briefing room. Now though, with everything he was seeing, he was starting to believe. He saw a cop in riot gear, smashing his nightstick into the head of what was once a lovely young woman. Her once lively blonde hair now sticky, and matted with her own blood as her skull gave way, but still she moved. The officer kneeling atop her struggling form did not stop beating her until lumps of brain spilled out through the cracks of her skull and she finally stopped moving.

The officer stood, satisfied, but another one of the creature jumped at him from behind a crashed car. The two fell to the ground, the officer trying to push the snapping creature away. Riley raised his rifle trying to get a clean shot. He started walking forward, but he saw another one of the monsters out of the corner of his eye.

Behind him the machine gun atop the tank opened up, .50 caliber rounds spewing death where ever the gunner aimed. He however, was not aiming at the creature running full tilt at Riley. Riley turned, and fired two shots into the creature's cranium. One of the bullets went clear through its left eye. As the back of the zombie's skull exploded in a shower of bone and gore it fell to its knees even as the contents of its skull splashed across the bloody concrete of the street.

Riley turned back to face the cop, even as the machine gun of the tank went silent. The cop was dead, three of the zombies tearing apart what remained of his riot gear. His abdomen was ripped open, and the undead ghouls pulled strings of wet and greasy intestine from the hole they had made. Pulling the long loops of organ into their mouths they chomped down on the feast. The officer's helmet had been discarded, laying a few feet away, splashed with its own blood, his face was half missing, the flesh torn away to reveal the gleaming white of bone obscured by the smears of blood across the eternal half grin.

Riley fired the remainder of his magazine into the creatures, killing them all. They fell away from the police officer, their blood mingling with his own. He instinctively replaced the empty magazine in his rifle.

Riley turned to see why the tank had stopped firing, and saw the machine gunner with his jugular torn open by a ghoul's jaws. Blood spurted from the massive wound even as the heart slowly began to stop pumping. The zombie that had done the gory deed had crawled inside the tank, and even through the metal Riley could hear the screams of the tank crew as a single undead hijacker began to feast on them one by one. Confined as they were by all their equipment, they had no way to defend themselves. They all died listening to their comrades being torn apart.

Riley stared in horror, on the edge of shock as he watched the gruesome fall of the one of the mighty unstoppable machines of man.

Riley turned away, Riley turned from the destruction, Riley turned from his duty… Riley turned to run, and run he did. Straight into the waiting arms of the officer who had been torn apart right in front of his eyes. With his half grin, strings of muscle still holding the one side of the jaw together, the ghoulish cop opened his mouth and bit into Riley's shoulder.

Riley screamed out in agony, and hit the officer with the flat of his rifle. The officer stumbled backwards, and Riley steppe forward to smash it in the face with his rifle butt. He saw what remained of that face implode with the force of the blood, gore leaking out through the mouth and nose and dripping down onto the ground. The zombie fell, but Riley never saw it, he was running now. Running and shooting.

He tripped on a curb, and nearly face planted into the ground. A zombie that had been running after him jumped onto Riley's back, and immediately started chewing on his midsection.

Riley screamed as he felt his flesh being gnawed away, his blood pouring from the open wounds. He twisted, giving the zombie access to another part of his belly, which the creature took quick advantage of, tearing into the yet unharmed flesh. Riley smashed at the creature's head with his rifle twice, stunning it long enough for him to try and scramble away.

The creature recovered too quickly, and bit into Riley's calf. The soldier let out a piercing scream, howling his pain out to the sky above, the sound reverberating off the walls of the buildings that surrounded him.

With one booted foot, Riley kicked out. His kick connected solidly with the zombie's head just as it had bitten down again. The kick pushed it away causing it to tear the flesh trapped in its mouth away from Riley's calf. The soldier let out a low scream of pain through clenched teeth.

Still on his back, Riley aimed his rifle, and put three bullets into the zombie's head, making sure it was dead.

As its blood pooled around the body Riley got up to his feet unsteadily. His wounded leg shaking beneath him Riley limped towards an old rundown, one story building. The windows had been boarded up long ago with rotting plywood, and the door swung open on a rusty hinge.

None of the ghouls outside had seen Riley go inside and so, unnoticed he leaned against one of the walls, looking at his wounds. The skin had been torn away completely, and chunks of muscle stuck out from where the teeth of the undead had torn at them. Blood ran quickly from the wounds. Riley knew that he would bleed to death here in this building, alone.

As he slipped into darkness, Riley only thought of one thing, his sister Samantha Legacy in Kingston. He hoped she was alright, her and her family. He hadn't visited them enough… not since mother had passed away. Now he wouldn't get his chance to see his nephews grow up.

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As rain crashed down on the world below, the once proud city of New York squirmed in its final death throes. The undead grew in number as the living died off, their blood spilling through the street, washed away by the rain that mercilessly poured over the remnants of man.

And in a lonely, dark, rundown building, a single soldier lay against the wall, his blood pooling around his body. He had lain there for hours, completely still.

His fingers began to twitch, and his eyes snapped open, filled with an unholy hunger.


End file.
